The Ascent of Stan

Here I am again, four hours before I set out for an ultimate tournament and still not asleep. Slave to some sort of quasi-karmic law prevents any ultimate player from sleeping the night before. Or maybe it's that 4 hour nap I took earlier today.

Tomorrow's some sort of Hat Tournament hosted by Prion Ultimate, a mixed team based out of Illinois that got 3rd in Mad-isc-on. Due to funding problems we had to sacrifice a tournament in either the spring or the fall. Naturally we chose the fall, thus a hat tournament rather than a full team one (for 15$ + gas is a pretty good deal I thought, although the 5 hour drive is a bit much). Roughly six of our players are going, three of our better ones, so hopefully this will help them get over the plateaus we've gotten ourselves into.

It occurs to me that I never updated about Glory Days, I should probably do so. I'm thinking I'm going keep this short, quasi-karmic laws be damned, I'm going to get at least 2 hours tonight.

Our pool consisted of Loyola, Missouri B, Western Kentucky and Northwestern. My pre-tournament predictions were something like 13-15 Loyola, 15-6 over Mizz B, 15-10 over Western Kentucky, and 7-15 Northwestern. Unfortunately these were based upon UPA rankings, turns out are much more fluid than I expected. Overall we came in thinking we could put in a solid bid for the champion's pool, but we were missing our key defensive freshman for a wedding, and our third best player (Cartier) due to a lacerated kidney. The kidney thing was a bit of a bummer.

We got to the fields before most of the teams, but for some reason our warm-ups continue to leave something to be desired. I was planning on starting with a scrimmage to erase some of our first point dropsies, but I got caught up in the captain's meeting, and by the time I got back we only had about 5 minutes until game time. Hindsight tells me that I probably could've delegated or gone to the captain's meeting late to meet the slightly higher priority of winning. Unfortunately I find it hard to delegate, due in great part to a severe lack of leadership after myself, Terp (who was with me) and Cartier (injured). B-Long's been trying to step up, but unfortunately he doesn't command the sort of respect needed, and everyone else...just kinda stands there.

Either way, we didn't scrimmage, just did some paired throwing and Endzone O, cheer and then hooray playing. The entire Loyola game was characterized by an incredible amount of drops, throwing errors, pretty much every turnover imaginable actually. They were ranked 101st so I was expecting a pretty rough match up, but we ended up taking half 7-2. They staged a comeback during the second half, but ended up unable to convert for the most part, even with the help of some of our players. Us 11-7.

Missouri B. I was expecting some rest after the Loyola game, playing a B-team and all. Unfortunately the team just kinda died, and continued to die for the first 4 or so points. This was a drastic and somewhat scary change; at Grinnell the team did fine when I subbed out, but this time around we ended up completely losing our focus. I ended up coming in on point 5 (1-4), and managed to help spark a comeback just in time for the hard cap. Us 9-7.

The Mizz-B team did help highlight some of our flaws as a team, hopefully ones that I can address in the future. They essentially had two handlers and then a team full of rookies, but even with this they still managed to keep some nice flow going, something that we lacked the entire tournament. I especially noticed when I watched the ISUC-Truman State game, we're playing more of an Ames ToP ho-stack: rely on two or three good cutters to advance it up the field, then rely on Greg to bomb it deep (it's much less deadly without Greg). Glory Days was just further proof of our inability to create an offense with in-cuts, especially when I was handling. It's actually pretty humorous, we have most of our games on tape, and every first point I have it's like dump throw, swing, Iain huck. Luckily for me we have a lot of track burn-outs on our team.

Western Kentucky: probably the more interesting of the games in pool play, we started the game by going down 0-6. Kentucky had been running a cup in their earlier games, but we still were unready for it. At 0-5 we finally got our zone-o clicking, I just remember looking at Terp and B-Long after we worked it full field until an ill-fated strike cut; they looked back at me with faces beaming, a mutual epiphany that we could break a cup, as opposed to being crushed by it a la IFUC at Grinnell. We then went on a 6-0 run until they utilized the girl-guy mismatch to score for half.

They subbed in their all-star after half, although he was slightly injured after Kentucky's game against Northwestern. He proved to be too much for us, even injured, unfortunately, hard cap is called at 8-10.

We then lost to Northwestern 7-15. The team had been relying on myself and our main cutter to propel both our offense and defense, and by this point we were absolutely drained. This was probably the most tired I've ever been during an ultimate game, I could barely even play defense, blech.

Day 2, we missed the champion's bracket by 6 points. First game is against Chicago-B. Another example of why we need to scrimmage before the game, this time I was indisposed getting our water, why I didn't delegate I don't know. It's a pretty tough game, nothing exciting, we win 10ish-8ish.

Grinnell was next, and I don't know if they had a tough game against Lewis or if they were missing some star player, but they just played terribly. They threw this 20 ft. cup on us, I just stuck a permanent crash in the center and we just worked it up easily. Only thing they had going for them was a few tall guy mismatches, but our speed was able to overcome them. We ended crushing them, although not without two spirit fouls called on me for encouraging my team to take it easy for the next game. Us 13-7.

I once entertained ideas about going to Purdue for college. I expected their team to be much worse than they were. In reality they were probably the most solid and utterly average team I've ever played against. Also had a taller, slower, less accurate throwing version of me - we had a fun time guarding each other. I don't remember why we lost this game, probably due in part to a lot of fatigue, some mismatches that were never really resolved, I don't know. A tough game laden with Iain and Iain-clone layouts, but ultimately we lose 8-10.

Pros: Layouts from lots of people, spectacular deep catches, great d throughout the tournament, freshmen stepping up, cup ownage, bright future for UNIPUC(?!)

Cons: Really really hard ground, our handlers breaking under pressure, inability to utilize in-cuts for an offense, no Champion's bracket, lack of flow/movement, throwing problems for a lot of our cutters, last tournament of the fall